Wanted: Mad Cow!

There’s a sick cow out there. And a food detective gets the call to track it down.

The phone rang two days before Christmas.

The moment investigator Will Hughes heard what the caller had to say, he knew he was facing a deadly health emergency. A diseased cow had been found—and many lives were at risk.

Early that morning, a tissue sample from a cow in Washington State had tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)—also known as mad cow disease. That’s a rare brain disorder that kills both animals and humans. In Europe, hundreds of thousands of cows have caught the disease. And 150 humans have died from it.

But mad cow disease had never appeared in the U.S.

Until now!

Hughes is an investigator for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That’s the government agency that checks the safety of the food we eat. He knew that animals and people could die from eating parts of this mad cow.

What’s more, by the time Hughes got the call, the cow’s meat had already been sent to packing plants, grocery stores, and restaurants all over the region.

Hughes is like a food detective. It’s his job to find these cow parts before anyone gets sick or dies.

He kissed his wife good-bye, grabbed his badge, and drove off into the night. He wouldn’t be back in time to celebrate Christmas with his family. He was facing his toughest case ever.

HOW DO YOU MAKE A COW MAD?

Mad cow disease is serious—but fairly rare.

You can call it mad cow disease. Or you can call it bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). But by any name, it’s a disorder that attacks the brain. There’s no known cure—and it’s always fatal.

A cow infected with BSE has difficulty holding up its head. Its muscles twitch uncontrollably. It stumbles and falls. Eventually, it loses the ability to walk. Soon after, it dies.

People who eat meat from a cow infected with BSE can have similar symptoms. Their brain tissue gets spongy, resulting in dementia. That’s a nerve disorder that causes loss of perception, memory, and judgment. After a while, they become paralyzed—and then die.

Brain Disease

The human version of mad cow resembles a rare brain disease called variant Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). It seems to affect mostly young adults. It strikes five or more years after the victim ate bad meat. In every case, the infected person has died.

Perhaps the best news about mad cow is that people do not catch it easily. Chances are, millions of people have eaten infected beef. But, for reasons scientists still do not understand, only about 150 people have gotten vCJD and died from it.

Cow Hunt!

Could one sick cow really trigger a food disaster? It could if it were fed to other cows.

Hughes knew that the meat from a single cow couldn’t make very many people sick. The real danger was if the disease was passed to other cows.

How could that happen? After cows are slaughtered, the parts you can eat go to meat processing plants to be made into hamburger and steaks. The parts you can’t eat—like the bones and hooves—are often sent to factories that grind them into meal for animal feed.

So the infected parts of the sick cow, like the brain and spinal cord, could have been put in the feed. If so, the disease could spread from herd to herd, creating a mad cow epidemic, or widespread outbreak.

Hughes studied the report to learn the facts of the case.

THAT’S OFFAL

These parts of the cow are banned from the food chain.

A few hours before Hughes received the call about the infected meat, a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist in Iowa had done a random test on some cow tissue. He looked into a microscope and saw a bright red stain on a slice of gray brain tissue. That’s a sure sign of mad cow disease.

The scientist checked his records. The sample came from a Holstein, a black and white dairy cow. She lived in Canada for most of her life. That’s probably where she got infected. But no one noticed, and she was later sold to a ranch in Washington State.

After the cow was killed, she was cut up. Then various parts of her body were sent to factories in three western states.

Now Hughes knew what he was looking for and where to start.

Hoofing It

Hughes and other investigators work around the clock to track the infected cow parts.

Hughes and other investigators from the FDA began tracking the cow’s parts through Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

For 32 days, they drove along icy roads in the middle of the night. They logged thousands of miles and battled fierce snowstorms. They slept in little motels and ate at truck stops.

Some trudged through muddy farms and feed mills. Others picked through carcasses in slaughterhouses. Some pulled bad burgers from grocery store shelves. At night, they talked on the phone and compared the day’s results.

Hughes was assigned to find infected cow parts at meat processing plants in Washington. He remembers the sad look on some owners’ faces when he flashed his badge. If there was a chance that any of their meat might have mad cow, they’d have to throw it all away.

“The business they built from scratch was destroyed—through no fault of their own. And there was nothing they could do about it,” Hughes says.

Some plant owners asked him to destroy their meat quietly. They didn’t want the word to get out. “Once your name gets mixed up with mad cow, no one ever wants to buy your meat again,” he says.

By February, about 2,000 tons of cattle byproducts were destroyed. Investigators had examined 75,000 cattle in three states—and killed 255 of them to test for BSE. (You can’t test for BSE on a live cow.) They didn’t find another sick cow.

Still, the investigators were confident they had saved the food supply from mad cow disease. After all, they had tracked down the diseased cow’s body parts—and then destroyed them.

But the process had cost many animals’ lives—and many people’s businesses and jobs. “When I look back at all the people who were affected by this one cow,” Hughes says, “it’s just heartbreaking.”

The Mad Cow Mystery

Could mad cow strike again? And would it be worse next time?

Hughes and his team had prevented a health disaster. They recovered enough of the sick cow to stop an outbreak of mad cow disease. It had taken the team more than a month. “This wasn’t exactly like finding a needle in a haystack, but it was pretty close,” he says.

Between February 2004 and February 2007, two more cows in the U.S. tested positive for mad cow disease. In both cases, their meat products were recovered before anyone got sick.

But the thought of a mad cow epidemic still keeps Hughes awake some nights.

He’s now the BSE coordinator in the Seattle district. His job is to prevent a mad cow outbreak.

Hughes has inspected everything from trucks that haul beef to pet food manufacturers who use trimmings from cow parts in dog food. Some days you’ll find him slogging through muddy dairy farms, inspecting cows. Other days he’ll be on conference calls with meat importers, teaching them how to spot sick cattle.

There’s a lot of beef out there,” he says. “We have to make sure that every scrap is safe—whether it shows up in a feed mill or on your dinner table.”

IS YOUR FOOD SAFE FROM MAD COW?

Government experts say you shouldn’t worry about your beef.

Can a steak or hamburger that’s infected with mad cow disease end up on your dinner plate?

The answer is: probably not.

Since the disease first appeared in England in 1986, governments have tightened their rules to keep sick cows out of the food supply. But it’s such a huge effort that it’s impossible to catch all bad beef, experts say.

Most cows become infected by eating feed that contains parts from sick animals. The FDA has banned the use of cow and sheep parts in cattle feed. But there are loopholes. Parts from ground-up cows are still used in feed for chickens and pigs. Those animals can then be made into feed for cows.

A Test for Meat

Each country tests slaughtered cows for disease, but at different rates. Japan, for example, tests a sample from every cow that will be used for food. The meat is kept in refrigerators until the test comes back negative. Most European nations test about 70 percent of their cows.

But in the U.S., only about 650,000 of the 35 million cattle slaughtered each year are tested. That’s less than one percent.

Some consumer groups have called for more testing and better detection safeguards. But the USDA says the food supply is safe. The chances of humans getting mad cow disease are still very, very low.